OPINION: Politics’ ‘suburban woman problem’: She’s not who you think she is
By Patricia Murphy | Jan 18, 2022
Georgia state Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, hosts a weekly podcast with two other suburban moms, one from Ohio and one from Virginia, called “The Suburban Women Problem.”
The title comes from a quote from South Carolina’s U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who declared to Fox News the day after Republicans lost the House in the 2018 midterm elections, “We’ve got to address the suburban women problem, because it’s real.”
By any name, those women have long been assumed to be the same kind of suburban dweller — white, married, with children, and maybe or maybe not employed outside the home.
But times have changed since the original soccer moms in 1996, as have the once-GOP stronghold suburbs of Atlanta, and the women who live there.
Rep. Clark herself is a perfect example. The Gwinnett-based mother of two holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and is a lecturer in microbiology and human anatomy at Emory University. She describes her Gwinnett district as “like a tapestry.”
State Rep. Teri Anulewicz, D-Smyrna, said she’s never heard from a parent in her suburban Cobb district about CRT.
But she hears constantly from the diverse moms in Cobb about health care access, caregiving, keeping kids in school safely, and quality education.
“Expanding access to Pre-K would be tremendous,” she said. “That would be a huge thing for mothers in my community and mothers across Georgia.”